The first element you need to shop for is a domain. Having a domain name is like buying property and giving an address for your new website.

You need to make sure that your domain name is brandable or, at least, keyword rich.

You should choose a domain with either .com, .org, or .net. If you purchase through Bluehost, you will get a free domain. In case you need to buy additional domains, GoDaddy is one of the better cheap registrars.

There are many tutorials and resources available on the internet that will help you set up a WordPress blog. Here are some of the tutorials I’ve written which you can use to guide you through the process of installing WordPress and setting up your blog:

One of the major benefits of WordPress is its great list of free plugins, many of which can be found at the WordPress plugin repo.

There are also many premium plugins that are available at varying costs.

Technically, as a new blogger wanting to start your blog with minimal investment, you may not need any premium services or plugins. But if you don’t have an investment issue, you can grab some of the premium plugins to help you increase your site’s functionality (like boosting your on-page SEO optimization).

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A blog scientist by the mind and a passionate blogger by heart ❤️. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud (Award winning blog), speaker at various international forums.
Life motto: Live while you can! Teach & inspire while you could & Smile while you have the teeth.

Thanks Harsh For this Information, It will help newbies, When I was new blogger, and want to migrate from blogger to wordpress, I asked the same question on a site but did not find the right answer at that time, But your post will help new fellows.

It’s really not expensive to start a self hosted WordPress blog, in fact, it is so cheap eespecially when you use coupon codes to get instant discounts! Really, these days everyone can setup their own hosted blog!

Nowadays starting blogs became very easy, lots of competition in hosting so we can get hosting at cheap prices, personally I recommend to go with JustHost for first year, because of 50 off with coupon.

Hey,
Great post and you have considered everything that a blogger have to pay for. But you can cut-off the prices if you want. Domain+Webhosting costs only about $42 in Just host. Setting up of a wordpress blog is a very simple task. Just do read some nice tutorials and you can do it yourself. Premium theme from elegentthemes are great and cheap. I recommend to use them and there are a lot of GREAT free themes outta there. You need to keep an eye on it. For the SEO part, if you are somewhat experienced, you can cover almost major parts without a pro. But you can hire one and ot won’t be a lose at all.

So if you do like this, you can easily start a WordPress blog for about a $100 budget. Just to cheer up the newbies who want to come to WP 🙂 … Don’t get upset after reading the calculations……You can cut it down to a great extend, if you want to ………. Just to let you know it 🙂

I think for a newbie who does not have enough budget, domain and web hosting are enough for expenses. You can find good looking themes related to your niche for free and plugins like Platinum SEO or All in One SEO take care of most aspects of SEO anyway. Other than that, it always helps that you are aware of SEO and learn more about installing and promoting a blog.

If you are blogging for business, it is better to know about selecting a niche, keyword research, how to get organic search rankings for your keyword, etc before selecting a domain name and web hosting.

Ultimately, it is always a question of time against money. If you are not willing to spend money, you have to spend time.

Considering that, building a business is never really free or even cheap.

Hi Harsh, thanks a lot for this great post. I am a new blogger, running WordPress on Byethost free hosting. As I am a newbie I’ll spend money on domain & hosting later when I’ll earn some money from my blog. But my question is, is there any risk to continue blogging on free hosting like Byethost?

Thanks Harsh you articles are awesome and really helping newbies like me. I have one qustion. I’m starting a blog and my budget is $350. Till now I have decided to go with,
Godaddy($10), bluehost($70 for one year), thesis theme($197), Plugins( EasywpSEO and SEO smart link plugins for $116)
but It’s going out of my budget so where should I compromise? Is it enough or I’ll need anything more? any suggestions?

Harsh I must tell you that you are indeed doing a very good job. Most of the time when we gain certain level in any criteria we often forget to help any body who is new to it and in the meantime we overlook the difficulties we face during that time. Coming up with a post to help the new comers is indeed very noble of you

Hi Harsh,
you are a great inspiration for a lot of newbie bloggers like us. I have stated my new blog referring your other article creating blogs on niche keywords.
I find your site on page 1 for anything to everything I want to for all blogging aspects.
great work
Thanks a Ton.

A very thorough guide, Harsh, thank you! We’ll link it from our blog as soon as we touch the topic again (and great resources deserve being linked to!).

Hostgator has been a great host to us so far. Where are you currently hosted at?

One of our team hosts her websites at a small reseller hosted by a friend of hers and she seems to appreciate the quality of the uptime and support. Perhaps we’ll talk more about small resellers sometimes; they may hide gems.

Hi Harsh, Can you tell us readers what your site like this would cost to build and setup. Hope you dont mind as im just thinking about paying for a complete setup as i have a subject i want to blog about already and dont want the long wait of learning all the wordpress setup etc. Thanks in advance

Hi Mr. Aryan, I would like to give answer of your questions. The registration of domain is for one year so you have to pay per year and it’s cost near about Rs 500 to Rs. 600. The web space where you want to store your file is costly and it depends on your requirements. The cost of web space may be monthly or early.

Thank you for your kind words. Well, I have a doubt. Is these offers only for the beginners or this will be the same figures for the renewal process after the completion of the current running plans such as hosting plan.

Hi Harsh!
Good article! I am always thinking about starting a blog site with an online magazine style look and monetize it as well. But I don’t know a single line of coding. Should I go for this interest or even if I start it somehow, may I face lots of problems later? Waiting for your advice and thanks in advance!

Starting a blog and monetizing it does not require technical knowledge. All it takes it hard work , dedication, and patience. Even I am not a coder. There are many articles online how to start a blog and make money from it. You can easily understand it.

Hi there, First of all thank you so much for this post and really I was looking for the same information from last few days. I want to start my blog and to be very specific I want to start self-hosted word press blog.

Hello Harsh
Just I purchased a domain name from godaddy.
I want to create own hosted a blog which I can connect with Google AdSense and affiliate marketing for earning. So tell me what should be do step by step and how to create that type blog and what will coast?
Please let me know that..
Thank you

Dear HARSH ,
I want to start my own blog with WordPress -hostgator -hatchling plan, how much it will cost me? is there any other service which is cheaper? Pls guide me as what I have learnt about blog is through you. Thanks

Hello! well i have a quick question. is it possible that we can host our own domain name on wordpress.org for free just like you wrote an article for blogger that we can host our own domain name on blogger.com. I used that information to buy my own domain name and then get hosted on blogger, but i want to switch to wordpress as blogger is giving very limited options to adjust the theme and layout

I am new blogger , purchased domain from godaddy and hosting in same , installed free wordpress theme (ColorMag) but my adsense been rejected.Does the free wordpress effect adsense approvel or should i go for premier wordpress theme .

@Yaseen
if you are looking to host your site in Indian server, then yes you can use Bigrock or Bluehost India. However, if your traffic or target audience are in other countries, you should pick server location based on that. This is a good time to read my earlier guide on how to target country specific traffic to learn more about importance of server location.

@ShubhaBluehost can handle 10k traffic/day provided you have optimized your site well. Make sure you are using limited high quality plugins & well coded theme.
Use Cloudflare to filter bot traffic
Use cache plugin to further reduce load on your server.

With proper optimization, shared hosting can handle good amount of traffic.

Hi HARSH AGRAWAL,
You have incredibly explained about Self-Hosted WordPress Blog but now I have no enough money to create a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog. That’s why Now I am using free Blogspot Blogger to drive my blog.
Thanks.

” I recommend you to start using custom domain name feature.” It’s a good idea but which company is good & where from will I buy the Domain for my blog? That’s mean, there are many Domain selling company has online but I dont know, which best is.

Hi Harsh, Thanks for nice information, I am running blogs with bluehost from last three years, I took 3 websites hosting plan and got one domain free, but later for renewal I didn’t got any discounts. All plans and discount given only to new customers. also free domain received at first time need to pay Rs. 1000 for domain renewal. Please suggest to ShoutmeLoud readers who already have hosting plan but expect some benefits or guidance while hosting renewals

Great blog – thanks for sharing. It’s always useful hearing about the process of setting up your own site, project or company. It’s become increasingly popular for people to branch out into their own individual projects – whether they’re a fun side business or a full-time profession. Thankfully, there’s a lot of great programs and tools now in place to make this more possible and easier than ever!

Thanks for the summing up things. I’m sure this will be very helpful to bloggers who are starting out. BTW I set up my blog on my own, love for DIY after all. And yes all the learning that comes with it.

Great Post!
I actually got myself a free domain along with a free hosting to get started on my self hosted account. My website: muditjhawar[dot]ml runs on free hosting by Hostinger and the domain is also a free one. Though, I’d prefer to get a dot com in the coming year.

Hi harsh agrawal,
Nice article buddy, i started to follow you and wants good tricks on blogging. I wanna start blogging on wordpress. I wanna ask you that which is the best plugins in WordPress for seo. And tell me one tging how can i make SEO proof article, have you a demo article, so i follow that demo and make good articke with proper seo.

Hey
i bought a domain name @ godaddy 128rs. and am unable to find to proceed through hostgator and WordPress. I somehow made it into WordPress free and it consists of priyankapicks.WordPress.com now. and upgrading it into priyankapicks. com is costing around7000rs. plus I am unable to understand hostgator thing. what am I expected to to at hostgator. please if someone can help, reply soooooon.

Hello ,
I started blogging on wordpress.org and bought domain name from godaddy. But now i don’t find any way to install wordpress on godaddy , when i visit hosting section it gives me message that “you have no hosting plans” but i paid for basic hosting plan for wordpress and got free domain name with it. Customer care for godaddy taking too much time to respond.

What is the difference between blur like bluehost and hostgator. Do you have any article written about how to install WordPress on hostgator , I would like to go for the hostgator as it is cheaper than blue host. And in what hosting platform does shoutmeloud running?

Harsh, I am planning to get bluehost hosting to start a tech news related blog but it will be my first time in WordPress. My budget is max $150 including all cost like theme, SEO plugin and if there is any others.
If I choose basic then should I include “Search Engine Jumpstart”, site backup & lock?

Hi Dear sir, Thanks for a great post and a list of seriously useful resources. I particularly like the way you have shown how we can start with free ones and then upgrade to paid as “things” scale up.

I daren’t think how much I have spent to get started although it’s very much on the low end compared to the list for a blog pre Eur.

I was “taken in” by the blogging is free hype initially, but I’m now on a mission to warn people they need to have a budget. In fact, I think trying to do everything “free” cost me more in wasted time, lost profits and re-starts.

I am not a programmer, I can not install a website myself. So, I rented a company that set me up a WordPress website, and it cost me almost $ 200 (not including the cost of hosting and domain hosting) – I’m in Vietnam.